‘Peacemaker’: Jennifer Holland on [Spoiler]’s Death & Harcourt as Leader
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Peacemaker Episode 7 “Stop Dragon My Heart Around.”]
The team has a new leader by the end of the penultimate episode of Peacemaker.
A lot comes out when Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) confronts Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) about planting the diary in Peacemaker’s (John Cena) trailer, including that Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) is her mother. But the team must come together following Murn’s (Chukwudi Iwuji) death, and when they need a new leader, they look to Harcourt.
Holland tells us what that means to her character and teases next week’s finale.
What makes Harcourt feel ready to lead the team?
Jennifer Holland: I think Harcourt has always been ready to lead. She leads herself in her own one-person team just fine, but I think that the big thing about this episode and what happens with the team sort of electing her is she started to feel like she finally realized why it might be good to work with a team. At the end of Episode 5, when she puts everyone on the text chain and she starts to sort of relish this little mini family that she has, I think you start to see that maybe she’s realizing that she wants that and that she’s ready to be a part of a team and that there’s something good about that.
And so before Episode 7, you’ve seen that she wants to accept that she’s a part of a team now, but I don’t think she has necessarily felt up until this episode like she has been accepted into the group. I don’t think that she feels like everyone else wants her there. She has started to become vulnerable enough to want to be a part of the group, but until this moment, I don’t think that she’s felt like everyone else wants her there and like everyone else is accepting her place inside the group. So when she’s elected and everyone agrees, to me, what’s happening for Harcourt is she’s feeling like she’s been accepted now into the group. It’s more of a feeling of “this is really my team now” rather than a feeling of “everyone just elected me to be the leader.” I think she’s just finally feeling like she she’s fully a part of the team and she’s not alone anymore.
Courtesy of HBO Max
I love that text chain. I’d love to read the entire thing. I think it would be hilarious.
[Laughs] Yeah, probably just a lot of mermaid emojis, I guess.
This episode also features that Harcourt-Adebayo fight, with everything coming out — Adebayo planting the diary, the guy Harcourt killed, Adebayo being Waller’s daughter. How’s their relationship going into the finale after that?
Harcourt confronts Adebayo. She is livid with her. She feels betrayed by Adebayo. What is key about that to me is that without Harcourt having become vulnerable and having started to trust Adebayo and having started to have a friendship, like a true friendship with Adebayo and feeling like she was finally letting her in and opening up maybe for the first time in a very, very long time with anyone — she just feels so betrayed by Adebayo that if she was a more emotionally intelligent human being, she probably would’ve cried. But instead she confronts her with anger, with rage almost.
They get broken up from that fight that they have, that confrontation that they have by Murn saying that there’s bigger things going on that they need to [deal with], so when they come back together, you don’t know where Harcourt’s head is at in terms of how she feels about Adebayo. But there’s something about I think Murn’s death that puts everything into perspective to some degree for Harcourt and she lets out all of her rage and all of her emotions and every bit of her that wants to just break down in tears in the fight with Judomaster.
And so I think by the end of that fight, it’s almost like this big breath of fresh air and she’s been able to work through all of the anger that’s been covering up all of the real true emotions underneath that anger. So by the end of that, when she and Adebayo have the conversation that they have, and Harcourt says something to Adebayo to the effect of she’s good at the job, she wishes she wouldn’t leave because the truth is that she’s good at the job, I think you get the feeling that Harcourt’s past all of it and that she accepts Adebayo and that they may have some complications, but ultimately she trusts her and accepts her.
Courtesy of HBO Max
Also, I think she empathizes with what it must be like for Adebayo to have the type of mother that she has because we don’t know much about Harcourt’s parents, but we can infer from the fact that she was given her first Glock at 12 that there’s probably some complications there. And so I think she empathizes with Adebayo and knows that it must be difficult to have Waller as her mother. She accepts her after all of that stuff that they go through.
Speaking of Murn’s death, Harcourt had a sweet goodbye moment with the Butterfly.
Harcourt doesn’t consider that her team members are going to die. I think she doesn’t allow that to be an option. She believes that she’s going to do everything in her power to make sure that that doesn’t happen, and so I think that this moment completely catches her off guard. She does not expect Murn to die and I think there’s just something, aside from that, about this small fragile thing that is so powerful and had taken over this person and was such a complicated being, this little Butterfly, but that was such a changed sort of character in that the Butterfly that took over Murn sort of went completely against what the rest of the Butterflies were doing and became this totally separate being with its own thoughts and really went against the grain. I think that he was a hero to some degree and Emilia Harcourt views him as a hero and maybe her hero. And so I think that it tears her apart when Murn dies.
Speaking of the Butterflies, what can you preview about the finale and the team’s mission and attempt to stop them?
I can tell you that it’s action-packed fun. It’s a lot of fun to watch. … It’s a wild ride. I love the finale and I hope that everyone else loves it as well. There’s a lot to unpack about the last episode. A lot of things happen, so it’s not one to be missed, that’s for sure.
Peacemaker, Season 1 Finale, Thursday, February 17, HBO Max
